An independent data team for Kickstarter creators.

BackerBench exists for one reason: most creators launch a Kickstarter on intuition. Goal numbers, pricing, timing, video length — every decision is a guess, and most guesses are wrong. The platform won't tell you, and the top consultants charge $30K+.

The data

We aggregated 372,096 Kickstarter projects spanning April 2009 to April 2026 — every category, every country, every status. The dataset includes goals, pledged amounts, backer counts, launch and deadline timestamps, creator profiles, and editorial flags like Staff Pick.

All data comes from publicly available Kickstarter project pages. We don't scrape backer lists, comments, or anything behind a permission boundary. We don't republish project descriptions or images. We aggregate and analyze — that's it.

What we publish

Free category reports. One per major category, with findings, charts, and the caveats that show up in the data. Released monthly, distributed via email.

Free pre-launch diagnoses. Paste your project URL, we'll benchmark it by hand and email you a personalized report. Limited to 50 per week so we can give each one real attention.

Insights newsletter. Short, data-driven posts on patterns we find while building reports. No "10 hacks" content.

What we don't do

• We're not a marketing agency.
• We don't run paid ads for clients.
• We don't take a percentage of pledged amounts.
• We're not affiliated with Kickstarter, Inc.

How this is paid for

Currently, free. Long-term we plan to offer a paid pre-launch diagnostic tier ($99) with deeper analysis and faster turnaround, and a small SaaS dashboard ($49/month) for active campaigns. The free reports stay free.

Get in touch

Reply to any email we send, or write to [email protected]. If you've worked on Kickstarter campaigns and want to collaborate on a category report, please tell us — we're always looking for domain experts.